


We Have Existed

by glioscarnach



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: (rowing is the gayest sport on earth), Canon Gay Character, Canon Jewish Character, Catholic Character, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oxford, Pining, Rowing, Slow Burn, poxbridge, religious ceremonies, so much fucking pining jfc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 10:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12297525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glioscarnach/pseuds/glioscarnach
Summary: Don pines a lot. That's pretty much it.





	We Have Existed

**Author's Note:**

> Donald Scripps is Catholic, because frankly I refuse to believe such a ridiculously martyrish person could ever exist within any other Christian tradition.  
> If there are any inaccuracies regarding Judaism please point these out because I am an ignorant goy.
> 
> Dedicated to my wife Beth, who nearly murdered me for writing this. I remain unapologetic.
> 
> Come yell at me on tumblr @lady-threewhiteleopards

Don really knows he's fucked when there's an unseasonably sunny week in late September, a few weeks into their first term at Oxford, and Posner comes to meet him in the Botanical Gardens after his afternoon seminar, both having agreed earlier that it’s far too warm out for the Bodleian. Pos is smiling that secretive pleased smile he has, sometimes: cat with the cream, with the right quotation at the right moment. He’s won an argument about some aspect or other of the Reign of Terror, or the Committee of Public Safety, but Don really isn’t listening to the details as the sun is illuminating a scatter of new freckles on the other boy’s face as he talks, and the only words that come to mind as Pos waits for his response are ‘Glory be to God for dappled things.’  
Pos blinks momentarily, then gazes up at the light coming through the tree they’re sat under. He agrees: it is a beautiful day, though he can’t quite get used to Oxford’s terminal lack of concrete. He never thought he’d miss that, he says, and Don manages a laugh. _That is not what I meant, at all_ , he thinks, and he really is _fucked_.  
-  
It’s bad enough, being in Oxford and not having the proper accent for it. It’s bad enough even Posner doesn’t pass muster, and honestly, Don is just tempted at two months in to start using his _Brief Encounter_ BBC Voice in every seminar he attends.  
Of course, he is far too stubborn for that. But in his less principled moments he considers how much easier it would make things. He wonders too in these moments how Pos is doing – he sounded posh enough back home, when he wanted to, but God knows if that means anything. God knows, on reflection, very little about Oxford.  
It’s bad enough having to modulate every bloody sentence in every bloody class, and then the fucking Strike starts. Of all the things, he wonders, to make him homesick, this weren’t one he expected.  
-  
About two months into the Miners’ Strike, Don takes up rowing. It’s a better use of energy, he reckons, than punching someone’s teeth in in his Industrial Revolution seminar. That would be deeply uncharacteristic of him, and besides, he’d rather keep his bursary.  
He doesn’t end up caring much for the rowing team, which he expected; quickly enough he finds someone with the lend of a boat, and goes out between classes, before Mass, any time he wants a little peace. Isolation, when chosen, is far more poetic than just moping by himself.  
He’s out at dawn one morning, a crisp Saturday in November, nothing in his head but the mist on the river and how it parts as the boat’s prow slices through it; how he can’t for the life of him come up with a good simile for that.  
Then he spots Pos, of all people, on a bankside path, trudging the way one only can after few hours’ sleep in a room not their own. It’s been a few weeks; he’s been busy, but Don only hesitates a moment before calling out to him.  
‘Pos! Oi, Pos! David!’  
The first name does it; he can’t imagine anyone calls him Pos anymore, here. The figure on the bank turns around, and momentarily the fed up confusion on his face clears in a flash of recognition.  
‘Don! I didn’t know you rowed,’ Pos – David – is wrapping his coat even tighter around himself as Don pulls the boat up the bank. As if that could disguise the unmistakeable look of last night’s clothes on him.  
‘Summat new,’ shrugs Don, resisting the urge to smooth David’s fluffy hair down. It’s gotten longer, and that disastrous dye job is finally fading, but it’s not had contact with a comb today. He feels like his mother, sometimes, around Pos, but he supposes that’s the Catholic in him. ‘Better than being int’ books all the time.’  
David hums his assent, absent. He’s looking at the river slightly too intently for Don’s liking, and he frowns.  
‘Something happen, Pos?’ he says, softly.  
Posner snorts. ‘It didn’t. That’s rather the issue,’ he says, in what he tries to be a tart manner but just sounds pissed off and a little fucking miserable.  
‘Right,’ says Don, because nothing else he can think to say would really cut it.  
‘Yeah.’  
There’s silence between them for a long moment, Pos looking at the river and Don looking at him looking at it. Then he shrugs mentally because fuck it, why not be like his mother sometimes?  
‘Look, hop in, alright?’ he jerks his head toward the boat. ‘I’ve got to moor this in town and you need a proper breakfast by the looks of you.’  
‘Certain it’s seaworthy?’ says Pos, ghost of a smile appearing as he eyes the rather battered boat.  
‘You’re only small, Pos,’ says Don, and laughs at the indignant look he gets for that. ‘We won’t sink.’  
And as they head upriver, David humming something to himself and occasionally breaking off to exclaim at how empty everywhere is, Don thinks again, _we won’t sink._  
_We won’t._  
-  
Don is used enough to Posner’s appearing in his room in a gust of flapping robe and dramatic sighs, and barely looks up from his book as he flops dejectedly on the sofa. He finishes the paragraph, leaves the book open face-down - oh, Hector would hate him for it - and goes to fill the kettle. He’s learned it’s best to let Pos lament his trials at his own pace, and besides, he’s been wanting tea for half an hour now.  
He’s stirring in the sugar (half a spoon for him, two for Pos, and plenty of milk in both) when said lament begins.  
‘My parents want me home for Passover,’ Posner says in his most plaintive tones, and collapses backward on the sofa as Don sets his tea down on the fraying carpet.  
‘And they said if I’d met a nice Jewish girl, I should bring her along.’  
‘I thought you’d told them.’  
‘…Well. They didn’t exactly say that. They said if I’d met _someone_. The _nice_ and _Jewish_ are implied.’  
‘Which you haven’t?’  
‘No!’  
Don, very admirably, does not flinch.  
‘Anyway, I can’t,’ Pos continues. ‘I only know enough Yiddish to know they’re all talking about me.’  
Don huffs out a laugh.  
‘I’m serious!’  
‘Well, you know,’ Don begins, slightly unsure. ‘Far as I recall, Passover’s in the middle of exams this year anyway, so you’ve always got that excuse.’  
Pos looks at him like he’s grown an extra head.  
‘How the fuck do _you_ know when Passover is?’  
‘Well, you’ve kept track of my Mass timetables the last five year. Least I can do is keep track of yours.’  
Don says it as casual as he’s able, and he’s not looking at Pos at all, not looking at the expression of delighted surprise that’s lighting up his narrow face. Not at all.  
He’s definitely not putting any concentration into not grinning as Pos takes his leave, excuses ready for his next letter, his tea quite forgotten.  
He definitely doesn’t smile into his book as he picks it back up, and he definitely pays full attention to the Napoleonic Wars for the next hour and a half.  
-  
They’re punting, of all fucking things, when Pos brings up what had happened that morning by the river.  
‘You know, when you found me there when you were rowing, that morning…’ he starts, staccato, and trails off, drifting his hand in the water.  
‘Watch out, pike,’ says Don automatically. He’s never actually seen one, but Pos is the sort of person who _would_ get mauled by a fish, so he can’t be too careful. Pos rolls his eyes, but does as he’s told.  
‘That morning, though,’ he says, shaking the water off his hand. The droplets sparkle a bit, in the weak sunlight. ‘I’m glad you found me.’  
‘Mm?’  
‘Yeah. When… well, when it _didn’t_ happen-‘he sighs, irritated. ‘Well, really – I was all set to be ravished, you know? And the bastard fell asleep.’  
Don snorts a laugh at that, but he doesn’t think it’s funny at all.  
‘Clearly had crap taste, then.’  
‘No priorities,’ Pos smiles up at him. ‘Anyway, sod him. Turns out he votes Tory anyway.’  
The laugh is genuine, this time. Maybe David is getting better taste, after all.  
They grumble for a bit then about Bloody Southerners, which has become a favourite, if predictable, topic amongst all the Cutlers’ lads whenever they, increasingly infrequently, meet up. Really, for all that they’re supposed to be clever, none of them had really considered the implications of going to university in the south. It was just so full of fucking _southerners_.  
The conversation drifts with the boat along the current, and they end up in companionable silence, eating their sandwiches and pretending to go over notes, the punt moored haphazardly to a willow branch Don managed to reach.  
‘Any progress with you, then?’ David says, looking up from under his lashes. Judging by the way Don’s stomach flips at that look, no, there’s been no progress at all.  
‘In what area?’  
‘Ravishment.’  
‘God, no.’  
‘Oxford girls not up to your exacting standards, then, or...?’ the look David’s giving him is exactly as sly as his tone, and Don avoids answering by stuffing the rest of his ham sandwich in his mouth. He shrugs, sending up a silent, desperate prayer for this particular conversation to end.  
‘You know,’ Pos says, more thoughtfully. ‘I don’t understand why you lot get so hung up on sex.’  
‘I’m hung up on it? You’re the one keeps bloody well bringing it up!’  
‘Catholics, I mean. You can’t say you’re not obsessed. Well, that and death.’  
‘So are Jews!’  
‘Well, we do tend to be better acquainted with its imminence,’ says Pos, without venom, and Don’s got to concede that.  
‘Was there a point you were making, then?’ Don asks after a little pause.  
‘Yes! You’re so hung up on sex – or rather the lack of it, but for Jews it’s a _mitzvah_. A blessing.’  
‘What, shagging is?’  
‘There’s even rules about how much you should have – depending on your job.’  
‘They thought of everything, clearly. What’s it for students, then?’  
David pauses for thought, looking down at the water. ‘Weekly, I think. Or more often.’  
Don snorts. ‘Dakin’ll be the only one managing that, then.’ He regrets it as soon as he says it, but when he looks up to apologise, the hurt he expects to see in Pos’s eyes isn’t there. There’s something else, but he can’t identify it.  
‘I suppose so,’ Pos smiles. ‘I haven’t the time to keep track of him anymore. Well, I do, but I’d much rather spend it punting.’  
The _with you_ isn’t said aloud, but Don can practically see it floating in the air between them. There is a long moment where he finds he isn’t quite breathing.  
There’s a crashing of bells – one, two, three, four – as David opens his mouth to ask why the fuck Don’s got a look on his face like a landed fish, and by the time their ringing stops, he’s composed himself again. Ish.  
‘Look, Pos, I’ve got a tute...’ he glances at his watch, not really seeing it. ‘Thirty seconds ago. We should really get going.’  
David just nods, an odd expression on his face. Almost a smile, almost… not.  
He nearly forgets to cast them off from the willow branch, and Don never does make it to his tutorial.  
-  
Neither of them – none of them, really – want to go home for the summer hols, but only Dakin (predictably, jammy bastard) has managed to get a job, so they end up congregated at the train station, stood in a group like they’re familiar but talking like strangers at a bus stop. Yes, the weather’s been lovely. Yeah, the exams were shite. Et fucking cetera. Even Pos seems distant, and Don just wants to fucking disappear.  
How did he never notice this, this drifting apart? It’s only been a few weeks – a month? - since they were all together like this – also at the station, Timms’ suggestions of drinks never quite came to fruition as often as they’d have liked – and now none of them seem to know what to say to each other. So they end up talking about Dakin, of course, because when there’s nothing to talk about they always talk about Dakin. Don finds himself watching David, for signs of discomfort he tells himself, but there aren’t any. Maybe he really has moved on.  
The train is packed, when it comes, but he and David end up in the same carriage, and after Birmingham and some manoeuvring of seats, end up sat at the same table, side by side. It’s hot, and it’s cramped, and it’s late in the day, but the train is rocking steadily on its way north, and Pos inevitably ends up asleep, duck-fluffy head resting on Don’s arm.  
The woman sat opposite them gives Don a Look which he doesn’t quite know how to decode; he opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it again as Pos does a little sigh in his sleep; burrows his head closer. He leans back on the headrest, and is never sure afterwards if he imagined the hand slipping into his own as he drifts off.  
-  
Don watches too much news, that summer, and talks about little else. It’s a distraction, and as distractions go not a bad one; it’s better than smoking. Especially as his mam, a semi-reformed forty-a-day woman, would murder him quicker and messier than lung cancer ever could if she caught him. He’s already gotten the impression, depressing as it is to admit, that perhaps he is more like Irwin than he’d thought; he was better suited to journalism – petty and glib – than to history.  
With that wavering goal in mind, then, it wasn’t a surprise to get up one morning in June and have his mother’s first breakfast-table words to him be ‘don’t be going any-fucking-where near this shite in Orgreave, Donny.’  
He isn’t nearly awake enough to know what in Christ’s name she’s talking about, but after an absent-minded bowl of cornflakes and staring at the BBC News for half an hour, he’s rather in the mood to disobey. He won’t, of course; his mam ranks far above either truncheon-wielding mounted police or God Himself in the hierarchy of Things To Be Afraid Of.  
So he goes to David’s house instead.  
‘Everything’s gone to shite,’ he says, by way of greeting, and it’s lucky it’s David (still pajama’d at noon, and blinking disgustedly at the sunlight) that opens the door, because he’s worked up enough to have said it to Mrs Posner. (He’d never been on her wrong side, thank God, but he’s been reliably informed by Pos that if their mothers ever joined forces they could overthrow Western society in about ten minutes. He doesn’t doubt this.)  
David, for his part, looks equal parts concerned and sleepy, though he still remembers to tell Don not to put shoes on the carpet as he invites him in. (He also tells Don he deeply regrets ever saying ‘Tread softly, for you tread on my good carpet,’ as it’s now become his mother’s favourite phrase.)  
Don is thoroughly thwacked about the head with a slim volume on Great Famine historiography when he reveals that yes, fine, it is just the news – which by the way isn’t _just news_ , Pos– that has him in this state.  
Still, Pos tolerates him setting up camp in the pristine living room – they do have a better telly, after all – and keeps his acidic comments on journalism at a merciful minimum.  
Don realises later, when he’s gone back home, that it’s the longest time he’s spent with David since the train up. And he wonders what it is about himself that lets people forget about him so quickly, quietly and without his even noticing. He wonders if he can do anything about it.  
Maybe it’s just who he is.

-  
Back in Oxford, they finally all do manage to meet up for drinks. Don had taken the initiative for once – a new vow, to others as much as himself – and they’re holed up in a shitty Irish pub where their pints stick to the rickety tables. It’s crap enough that, tuning out the sound of the landlady bickering with a barfly in a Derry accent that’d go through granite for a shortcut, they could almost be back home. Which is, incidentally, the turn the conversation is taking. Dakin had only gone back to Sheffield for the weekend, once, over the summer, and told nobody about it. He is rather secretive about aspects of his life other than shagging, but perhaps this is because there are very few of them.  
David is late, maybe not coming at all, and Don finds it impossible to keep up with the conversation for all that he’s watching the door. He even misses Dakin’s knowing smirk and unsubtle rib-dig at Akhtar.  
‘Your girlfriend coming then, Scrippsy?’ Dakin says. His voice has the same danger in it as when he told Mr Irwin about Auden. ‘You never said owt about her if she is.’  
It takes a second for this to register, then Don shakes his head. ‘Don’t have one.’  
‘Don’t you want one, then?’  
Don shrugs, contemplates his pint. ‘We’re not all _you_ , Dakin. Some of us think of other things.’  
The others have all gone quiet, as always happened when Dakin trots out his Dangerous Tone. Waiting to see what happens. Don is really fucking sick of it.  
But as Dakin opens his trap again for the dispensing of some other smart-arsed comment, the lads let up a roar – swiftly followed by the landlady telling them all to shut the fuck up or she’ll kneecap them. David’s come through the door, finally – Akhtar is the first to launch from his seat and hug him, and Don feels an unreasonable sting of jealousy but stays sat down.  
David – Posner, they’re all calling him Posner tonight – sits down at last and settles a half in front of him. There is, naturally, universal scoffing.  
‘Prozac,’ Posner enunciates, the hard ‘c’ of the ending vicious as a bullet, ‘rather makes one a bit of a cheap date. And all things considered, I could do a lot better than the lot of you.’ And he sips delicately at his half-pint.  
‘Fucksake,’ says Akhtar, breaking the stunned silence. ‘And you were a fucking lightweight to start with, Pos.’  
Don takes the gleefully bickering argument that follows as an excuse to slope off outside for a fag. Waiting all evening for him like a fucking puppy – spaniel heart was bloody right – and he finds out he’s even more of an unobservant fucking pillock than he thought. Christ.  
‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ says Pos, beside him – how did he always manage to creep up like that? Lad was like a housecat when he wanted to be. ‘Bad for you.’  
‘Pos-‘ Don starts, unable to look at him. ‘I’m-‘  
‘Very sorry for not noticing my pulling a Sylvia Plath on you, yes. I know,’ Pos has his hand on Don’s shoulder, and his faded-looking smile is something other than sad. ‘It’s fine. I’m just… Well, I must be a better actor than you.’  
Don forces a small smile. ‘Still. I should’ve…’ He trails off; he doesn’t know _what_ he should’ve. He never does, with David, which is really the problem.  
‘Give us a cig and you’re forgiven, alright?’  
Don’s already fishing in his pocket for the battered Pall Malls he nicked from his mam as he says ‘thought you said they’re bad for you.’  
‘No. Bad for _you_. _I’m_ depressed though, so it’s poetic.’  
‘I’m sure,’ says Don, and because Pos seems to be expecting him to, lights the cigarette for him.  
‘Like the films,’ says Pos, softly. Exhales. Coughs a bit like he’s a minor character in a Russian novel. Takes another drag. ‘Very dashing.’  
‘I try.’  
‘Too much, Don, sometimes. Too much,’ David says, and he’s looking right at him, through him almost, and Christ, Don really wishes he’d had a lot more to drink before this. But he hasn’t, so he’s still a coward, and he just stands there for the time it takes Pos to finish his foul, stolen cigarette, wishing he could fucking move, speak, do fucking anything but just _look_ and _wish_.  
‘Thanks for the cig,’ says David, flicking it away and almost turning, then thinking better of it.  
He only has to lean up a little to plant a kiss on Don’s cheek, doesn’t even have to catch hold of his coat, that fucking coat he’s had since lower sixth. He still does, a bit.  
‘Night, Don.’  
He’s already gone back inside the pub when Don’s brain is capable of language again.  
‘Night,’ he says, to nobody.  
He walks home.  
-  
It’s easier between them after that, somehow. Neither of them talk about it – the kiss, or the Prozac, or the strange, frantic distance of that summer. It sits between them always, but somehow comfortably – a sleeping cat, curled up where it shouldn’t be.  
Don gets used again to Pos crashing into his rooms at all hours, sighing about his latest tragedy – more often than not, these days, an argument in seminar than any attempted conquest or ravishing. For someone with absolutely no sense of direction – the ‘wandering Jew’ jokes had got old years ago, for all that David still makes them – Pos has a dovelike homing instinct for Don’s room.  
In late September, a week or so after the pub, he all but topples through the door and launches immediately into a panic about how he’d forgotten it was Rosh Hashanah, he’d _forgotten_ , and if his mother –  
Don’s got a bowl of apples on the desk that serves him as a tea counter, and there’s a jar of honey by the kettle, unopened.  
‘ _L’shanah tovah_ ,’ says Don, only tripping a bit over the pronunciation. And the smile he gets in response is enough to light up the rest of the year, he’s certain.  
-  
‘You’re out early,’ says David, conversational as he passes Don a cig. ‘What was it about?’  
‘Fucksakes Pos, you sound like my mam,’ Don mutters, lighting up. Then in a poor approximation of his mam’s Crumlin accent, ‘Have you been to Mass today, Donny? And wha’ was the priest talking abou’?’  
‘S’pose it’s my turn then,’ shrugs David, flashing that fucking smile that says _I know you better than you think I do_. They start walking, directionless.  
‘AIDS,’ says Don finally, his tone dark and flat as fucking tarmac. ‘Wages of sin is death and all that shite.’  
‘ _Stipendium peccati mors est_. Christ.’  
‘Nowt to fucking do with Christ,’ Don spits out, stubbing his fag out viciously on some priceless medieval architecture. He immediately digs out another, and David waits patiently as he struggles against the autumn wind to light it.  
‘Christ lived with… with prozzers and outcasts and fucking… This twat that calls himself holy thinks they’re below us. Un-be-fucking- _lievable_.’  
‘So you walked out,’ it isn’t a question, not really.  
‘Yeah.’  
‘Well… Well done,’ David says, and knocks his shoulder against Don’s.  
They don’t speak again til they get to David’s digs, and Don looks slightly surprised they ended up there but doesn’t say anything. He takes off his shoes automatically in the hall, though, and doesn’t catch David’s smile at his doing so.  
‘My room’s second on the right, up the stairs,’ David offers. ‘You look like you need tea.’  
Don just nods and slopes off. He’s not got his coat on, and David can’t help but notice the muscles of his shoulders under that blue fucking jumper he refuses to throw out. He must be rowing again.  
-  
Don gets a new typewriter – well, second-hand new, but for him that’s new enough – for Christmas, and he spends the entirety of the holidays trying to work the fucking thing out. He loses count of the amount of times his mam roars at him for clunking away at the keys late at night. David, when he comes to collect him for services (or, really, latkes – Don has a bit of an addiction) on the last day of Hanukkah, warns him off being a second e.e. cummings.  
‘One was enough,’ says David, brow arching beneath his fresh-cut fringe as they walk to his house, and God if he still hasn’t kissed him back by now-  
‘More than enough,’ Don agrees.  
-  
Don about has a heart attack when he sees Pos next, and it really isn’t his fault. The fucker has evidently been waiting for him, from the way he hops out from behind the boatshed with a victorious expression. It’s fucking dawn, and David’s wearing a poncy leather jacket that definitely isn’t his own, and really, Don would have liked a bit of fucking warning.  
David does apologise, when he stops laughing.  
‘Sorry,’ he says, trying to look contrite even as he stifles another giggle. ‘Felt like being spontaneous, you know? It’s these new pills-‘  
‘Yeah?’  
‘Yeah, they’re brilliant,’ David nods, enthusiastic in a way he hasn’t been for ages. ‘See, Prozac’ll make you less miserable – but then you realise you can’t _do_ anything when you’re on it, and you’ve got even more reasons then, to be depressed.’  
Don’s not sure how to respond to that, so he just nods. ‘That’s great, Pos.’  
‘I’ve got to catch up for lost time, now,’ David grins, and Don’s chest feels tight. ‘Debauchery and that.’  
‘Anyway,’ he goes on, when that doesn’t get a response. ‘We going rowing or not, then?’  
‘You mean, am _I_ rowing with you in the back chatting shite at me?’ Don smirks. David concedes this with a shrug and an unrepentant grin. ‘You going to be warm enough in that, though?’ he says, gesturing at David’s get-up: not just the ridiculous fucking jacket, but the new-looking (and, to be honest, crap-looking) jeans. He’s shivering himself in his tatty black coat and perpetual jumper.  
‘Course I will,’ says David, brightly, and pulls up his own jumper to show a second, even uglier woollen abomination beneath. Don can just about make out some sort of menorah in the gaudy design before it’s tucked away again. ‘Only good use for a Hanukkah jumper.’  
‘Right,’ says Don, shaking his head as he laughs. ‘I’ve taught you well, then.’  
‘Yes, mammy, I know _all_ about layers,’ David throws over his shoulder as he trots over to the boatshed. ‘Now, have I got to break this door down or are you going to make yourself useful?’  
-  
The leather jacket, which Don never got up the nerve to ask about, is a source of predictable amusement when the lads all meet up next.  
‘There’s a biker out there somewhere after your fucking head, Pos,’ Akhtar teases. ‘Seriously, you nick it off someone or what?’  
‘My mother,’ Pos says primly, sparking more laughter from the others. ‘Is certain I’ll grow into it.’  
‘Hope springs e-fucking-ternal,’ Dakin supplies.  
The rest are laughing at David’s put-out expression at that, but Don’s laughter is sheer fucking relief.  
-  
They’d agreed, by the summer, that it made more sense to share a flat, given the amount of time they spend in each other’s digs anyway. Don’s managed to get a dogsbody job at a local paper – printer’s devil, David likes to call him – and David’s got something in a bookshop.  
The flat’s tiny, and it’s cramped despite the lack of furniture. The closest thing to insulation is the stacks of books against every wall, and the tap in the kitchenette only works when you twist and swear at it in a particular way. But David ends up, unexpectedly, having a way with plants, and there’s something about the way their windowsills are filled with leaves stretching toward the sun that makes Don feel something akin to peace.  
He only wishes they had room for a piano.  
-  
Nothing much changes with their living together, except that when David’s got a speech to give about the slings and arrows of out-fucking-rageous fortune, he flops on Don’s bed, for the lack of a sofa in the flat. (When they’ve company, meaning one or other of the lads, or someone met at a seminar, they just stick down charity shop-bought cushions on the warped wooden floor.)  
Half the time he launches himself on Don’s bed, he never checks if it’s occupied first, and mostly this leads to him being toppled onto the floor along with accusations of bruised ribs and ‘your fucking elbow put a hole through my liver, you skinny bastard.’  
Still, David thinks. He’ll get the hint someday.  
Please fucking God.  
-  
In the end, or rather the beginning, or whatever-the-fuck it is, it’s Dakin that finally kicks his arse into gear. It’s less than poetic.  
‘So,’ says Dakin, by way of preliminary greeting. ‘Have you fucked yet?’  
Don all but chokes on his pint.  
‘That’s a no, then.’  
‘Of course it’s a fucking no, you bloody degenerate,’ Don coughs out.  
‘Call me that all you like, but you’ll not be so fucking _complacent_ ,’ he takes on Don’s broader accent for the last word. ‘When you die of blue fucking balls age thirty-fucking-three.’  
Christ’s age, thinks Don, but Dakin as always has anticipated his thoughts.  
‘Christ died for a better cause, you know,’ says Dakin in his sagest tones. ‘You, on the other hand, are merely nursing an obsession – unhealthy, in my opinion – with the mortification of the flesh.’  
‘It’s not just that,’ Don snaps out. ‘I- look, whatever you think, I don’t want to hurt him. It’s nowt to do with bloody religion; he’s been hurt enough, and for worse reasons.’ _Hurt by you_ , is what he doesn’t say.  
Unperturbed, unrepentant perhaps, Dakin carries on. ‘So you don’t want to hurt him… right. Good Catholic that you are, I’m sure.’  
There’s a thousand responses Don would like to give, only about half of which involve actual physical violence, but he just drains the dregs of his shitty pint and stands up.  
‘Fuck off, alright?’ he says, voice steady. ‘Just. God, Dakin, just fuck _right_ off.’  
He fucks off himself before he gets any response.  
-  
‘How’s Dakin, then?’ David asks, over cold takeout tea that night at their improvised coffee table. He’s a quarter of a bottle into the shite red wine Don had bought –the new pills really are great - but Don’s halfway through and already eyeing up the second bottle.  
‘Usual,’ Don says, through a mouthful of noodles. He washes them down with another slug of wine, not even wincing at the taste, and David’s a bit concerned. ‘Usual, acting a fucking prick.’  
‘Acting?’ says David, and if that sodding eyebrow arched any higher he’d lose it. ‘I thought that came natural to him.’  
Don snorts a laugh. ‘It does, and all.’  
And normally Pos would leave it at that, change the subject, start talking about sodding Keats or about some tit at the bookshop, about Gracie Fields or the doubtful fucking genius of Morrissey. But not this time.  
‘What was he being a prick about, then?’ he asks, voice light as he can manage. ‘There’s so many options there.’  
There is a long pause; long enough for Don to pour the rest of the wine into his mug, and for David to question the wisdom of saying anything.  
‘Love,’ Don says, finally, quietly. ‘He were being a prick about love.’  
‘For- who?’ David could kick himself for wavering, but-  
‘You,’ Don says, looking at him. At fucking last.  
David’s cheeks are too hot, and he’s consumed by the urge to scream, to sing, to do _anything_ that could release him from his fucking skin.  
‘Christ, you prick-‘David catches his hands, holds them like a drowning man. ‘You absolute fucking _prick._ ’  
‘Look, I-‘  
‘Shut up, Don,’ the words are barely audible. There are tears in his voice. Don shuts up.  
Behind them, the Smiths record David has been subjecting him to ends. _Thank fuck for that,_ Don thinks distantly, _I don’t want that flower-wielding tosser anywhere near this moment._  
Their hands are still entwined. Neither of them are daring to fucking breathe. The needle scratches along, sounding distant. Muffled.  
And David leans across, and kisses him, finally, fucking _finally_ , and it feels like nothing but a new beginning.  
-  
Later, much later, with David dozing in a pilfered jumper on his chest, Don finds himself having a ‘whenever’ moment of poetic understanding. Eliot, of all people, though he’d never have thought the sod would’ve had in in him.  
‘My friend, blood shaking my heart,’ he murmurs, hand carding gently through David’s hair. ‘The awful daring of a moment’s surrender, which an age of prudence can never retract-‘  
‘By this, and this only, we have existed,’ David finishes sleepily, and Don feels rather than sees the smile against his chest.


End file.
